Family NEOBALAENIDAE

(PYGMY RIGHT WHALE)

• Smallest baleen whale with no throat grooves, long and narrow cream-to-white baleen having very fine bristles and dark outer margins, arched jaw line, and posterior ribs very broad and flat; all seven cervical vertebrae fused.

• 590-650 cm.

• Southern Hemisphere seas.

• Pelagic and coastal waters, temperate to subantarctic.

• 1 genus, 1 species, 1 taxon.

• No species threatened; none Extinct since 1600.